


Quarantine Zone

by hylian_reptile



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Sick Character, Suicide mention, Vomit Mention, sick!fic, unrealistic depiction of sickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 21:30:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13466940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hylian_reptile/pseuds/hylian_reptile
Summary: Years after the Reds and Blues’s missions increasingly involve Locus saving their asses, Locus comes down with a flu. Grif volunteers to watch him. (Read the tags!)





	Quarantine Zone

Years after the Reds and Blues’s missions seem to increasingly involve Locus saving their asses, after their downtime began to involve Locus saving their asses from each other, after Wash and anonymous others (Carolina, although she’d kill you if you said so) insisted on having Locus around all the time without much explanation, and definitely after the Reds and Blues started making jokes about “ooh Mr Locus, what _are_ we”—years after, Locus comes down with a flu.

 

Anything that brings big, bad, scary Locus down to human scale is still hilarious to most of the Reds and Blues, except for Grif and Donut, who are too often involved in Locus’s secret, scandalous hair-care routine to be anything but habituated. Conversely, anything that brings big, bad, scary Locus down to human scale still scares the shit out of Locus himself, so he’s in the middle of sweating a hole through his own bed-sheets, hiding in his weird bug-alien-ship when they finally figure it out.

 

It goes like this: Sarge begins to conspire to modify the ship into a flying tank in Locus's apparent absence, which means that everyone realizes something is weird because Locus didn’t immediately reappear from the ceiling at first mention of this plan to tell Sarge to keep his wrinkly hands to himself. Sarge proceeds to have a yelling match with the ship’s AI in the lawn to open the blasted hell up and let him see his Red Team Rookie before Carolina and Caboose ask the AI, politely, using the word please, to open the hatch, at which point the ship opens with a happy jingle.

 

Everyone troops in, finds Locus, and immediately shares both a group-round giggle and a long, overdrawn groan because now they have to drag two-hundred-eighty pounds of mucus-y, wheezing, feverish murderer back to their base so they can stuff him full of Space Tylenol.

 

Symptoms are “literally fucking everything,” in Tucker’s esteemed medical opinion. "Just give him like, every single pill," is his prescription.

 

Wash’s assessment is more thorough: fever of a hundred and three point seven degrees, shivering, coughing (hacking, actually), nausea, muscle pain, headache, runny nose, and apparently so much fatigue that Locus spends a lot of time with his eyes closed just trying lay still, breathe, and conserve energy. They keep trying to feed him, but he’s either always sleeping, nauseous from the flu, nauseous from having eaten, or throwing food back up from nausea. Whatwith the five billion symptoms, it’s easy to miss the look of self-directed disapproval on Locus’s face when he closes his eyes, like Locus can’t believe his body had the _gall_ to pick up a stray germ, let alone succumb to it in such a spectacular manner.

 

Grif sees it.

 

Which is why Grif volunteers to be the scapegoat who goes into the so-called “Quarantine Zone” (aka the guest bedroom, aka Locus's bedroom). He goes with Sarge’s blessing, because Sarge hopes that Grif will catch whatever Locus has and die in his stead (yes, Sarge is still making those jokes). Simmons, on the other hand, expresses a genuine concern. He says that "Lopez should take care of Locus," since "Lopez can’t even get sick" and Lopez and Locus are the "Hispanic Gossip Circle" anyway. Grif claims that his new lifelong dream has been to stack multiple slices of bread on Locus’s sleeping face and that this is perhaps the only opportunity he’ll ever get, _ever_ _,_  c'mon Simmons, Locus is such a light sleeper every other time of his life, Grif _has_ to try.

 

Simmons requests a picture. It’s a deal.

 

The truth is, Grif hates being sick because he doesn’t like other people looking at him when he’s sick, and he knows Locus _also_ hates being sick for the same reason, so Grif figures—well, hey, he’s probably the least of the poisons in this base. Everyone else—yes, even Lopez—would probably talk a whole bunch of shit about it, and sometimes a person has to grow thick skin and endure people talking about your embarrassing weak points, but _other_ times, it’s really just nicer to have nobody talking about your embarrassing weak points from the get-go.

 

And Grif  _thinks_  that Locus might dislike being at his worst around Grif the least. Or he'd like to think, when he's being hopeful.

 

But on the second day, after Grif spends the whole day putting on blankets when he's cold and taking them off when he's hot and literally feeding Locus water through a tube, Locus opens his eyes, takes one look at Grif, closes them, and tells Grif that he has to leave.

 

“No way, dude,” Grif says, even as his heart rips a little. Even when the other Reds and Blues been huddled around him like a gaggle of housewives and Locus had clearly hated it, he'd never told any of them to leave before. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you. I dunno if you noticed but, like, you’re kind of literally dying, Locs.”

 

“That’s fine,” comes the weak reply.

 

“No, not fine. I want us to stick together.”

 

There’s a long silence, filled with Locus doing his thing where he just closes his eyes and visibly attempts to decrease ATP expenditure. The silence is so long that Grif thinks that Locus has fallen asleep. Grif begins to pull out a liter ziploc bag full of bread slices.

 

“That’ll be... a mistake,” Locus says, with effort.

 

Grif immediately shoves the bag back under his chair, even though Locus hasn't opened his eyes. “We’ve had this argument before,” Grif says. “Like, a billion times, every time you think you gotta return to your weird, brooding, Batman ways.”

 

“I’m right,” says Locus.

 

“Nah. Not on this one.”

 

“You always… say that,” says Locus, with a visible and unusual flare of anger that doesn’t impress Grif at all because it means Locus nearly runs out of gas halfway through his sentence. He actually has to catch his breath. “I’m… telling you. Now. Before.”

 

Grif frowns. “Before what? Oh, dude, are you a prophet?”

 

“Before... Wu,” Locus says. "And Chorus."

 

Grif does not reply.

 

“It’ll… be a mistake,” Locus continues, with effort, his eyes still closed. “To stay together. Leave me here. Before we start.”

 

“Still not leaving,” says Grif.

 

“It’s not murder to... leave a... wounded soldier... in the field,” Locus says.

 

Grif says nothing.

 

“Not suicide for a… wounded soldier to… be left behind.” A pause, then with as much emphasis as Locus can manage: “ _I_ say so.”

 

Grif says nothing.

 

“You’ll die without me,” says Locus. Like a self-soothe.

 

Grif says nothing.

 

Locus’s eyes are still closed.

 

Grif says nothing.

 

“Gates?” Locus asks.

 

Grif says nothing.

 

“Gates?” Locus asks again. "Are you still... here?"

 

Grif says nothing.

 

After long, long minutes, Locus breathes easier. Not deeply, but more steadily. Reassured—hopefully. Grif stands absolutely still for what feels like ages.

 

Eventually, he pulls back out his bag of bread. 

 

He gets his picture and, when asked, tells everyone that a flu-ridden Locus sleeps like the dead. Can't even get a word out of him, Geez Louise; Grif hasn't been so bored since armory duty, you know what he's saying? When Locus wakes up and Grif shows him the picture, Locus glares and coughs all over it.

 

Grif can be useful, sometimes.


End file.
